Global Security: Water as Strategic Resource

Water is no longer just a foodstuff and industrial feedstock. It is a strategic resource over which geopolitical power is negotiated. Whoever controls clean water controls the future – and the answer is no longer centralization, but decentralization.

The New Geopolitics of Water

According to the World Economic Forum Global Risks Report 2025, water crises rank among the five highest global risks over the next decade. Conflict lines are no longer primarily territorial, but defined along watersheds, groundwater bodies, and industrial consumption centers.

Three trends are intensifying the situation:

• Climate change: Weather extremes (droughts, flash floods) destabilize established supply structures.
• Population growth: By 2050, 68 % of the world's population will live in cities – mostly in regions with water scarcity.
• Industrial complexity: The semiconductor and pharmaceutical industries require ultra-pure water in quantities that strain entire supply networks.

Why Central Infrastructure is Vulnerable

Municipal water supply was built in the 19th and 20th centuries for one assumption: clean source water, large consumers, central treatment, linear distribution. This assumption no longer holds today.

Central infrastructure has three structural weaknesses:

1. Single point of failure: A single incident (breakdown, cyberattack, contamination) paralyzes the supply of entire regions. Recent examples (Jackson/Mississippi 2022, Flint/Michigan) show the consequences.
2. Long recovery times: Reconstruction of central treatment plants takes months to years. During this time, supply fails – an insurance question becomes an existential one.
3. High capital commitment: Central large-scale plants require billion-euro investments that are increasingly difficult to raise.

Decentralized Units as the Answer

The Air Liquide Project Markus strategy focuses on modular, decentralized treatment units. Each unit supplies a defined consumer circle (industrial site, hospital, building complex, municipal quarter) autonomously. The advantages:

• Redundancy: Failure of one unit affects only its supply area – the overall system remains stable.
• Scalability: Capacity expansion through additional units instead of major investment.
• Location flexibility: Installation at the point of need, no kilometer-long transport pipelines.
• Economic resilience: Investment risk distributed across many smaller units.

Technological Enablers

Three technological developments make decentralized units economically viable today:

1. Compact Membrane Processes

Modern nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membranes with footprints of a few square meters enable high throughputs in a small area.

2. Intelligent Control

IoT sensors and cloud-based process monitoring allow autonomous operation of decentralized plants with minimal staffing.

3. Industrial Gases as Process Aids

Air Liquide supplies oxygen for the biological stage, ozone for oxidative treatment, and carbon dioxide for pH control – all just-in-time and on-site.

Political and Regulatory Framework

The EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (2024) obliges member states to introduce trace contaminant elimination at wastewater treatment plants > 150,000 PE by 2045. This regulation indirectly drives decentralization: plant operators can either retrofit centrally or establish the 4th treatment stage in decentralized units at the point of discharge.

Conclusion

Sustainable water treatment is not a luxury. It is the only insurance against the instability of global supply chains. Decentralized units based on modern membrane technology, intelligent control, and process engineering expertise are the robust backbone of a crisis-proof water supply – nationally and internationally.